Tamarind Mem by Anita Rau Badami Read Free Book Online Page A

beauty, and finally the river was appeased, charmed out of her sulks.
    When Dadda went away I could trace on a railway map the exact lines of his journey. “Between Kumda and Karonji,” said Dadda, back home from yet another trip, “there was only one problem. An anthill as high as a hut which the villagers refused to destroy. A pair of king cobras lived in the hill along with the white ants. Nobody in their right senses destroys the home of a cobra.”
    “Why?”
    “Because,
Noni,
it will bring a curse on your head, of sickness and sorrow. But my assistant said that he was protected from the curse by a boon which Vasuki, the king of serpents, gave to his ancestors. He said that manymany centuries ago, this ancestor had saved Vasuki, who was trapped in a ring of fire. He held out a staff to the mighty snake, who coiled around it and escaped certain death.”
    “So did you destroy the anthill?”
    “No, we laid tracks around it, because the villagers did not believe my assistant’s story.”
    And it seemed that as soon as we got used to having Dadda home again, it was time for him to leave, armedwith a line-box full of provisions for a fortnight, sometimes a month. Each night before he left on a trip, I lay awake waiting for a quarrel to erupt.
    “What is so special about these trips that you cannot take us with you even once?” Ma demanded just before Dadda left for Darjeeling, a hill-station that my mother had been wanting to visit.
    “It is a duty trip, not a holiday, how many times do I have to tell you?”
    “Other officers go on these duty trips with their wives and children and mothers and aunts and all. Last month Mr. Khanna took his whole family to Simla.”
    “I don’t care what Mr. Khanna did, it is against railway policy and that’s the end of this stupid drama.”
    “Sathya Harischandra!” taunted Ma, referring to the mythological king who sold his wife and sacrificed his son for the sake of his principles. “Never mind the fact that I have to stay alone in this house and bring up two children without any help, and in the summer, look after your crazy sister as well. Oh no, all that does not matter so long as you stick to your noble duty!”
    “Rules are rules,” said Dadda stiffly.
    “Rules, rules, rules, that’s all you care about.” Ma started to cry, harsh, loud sobs that scared me. In the past, when Roopa was just a baby, she had argued bitterly but never-ever cried. Dadda left the room abruptly, slamming the door behind him. He would sleep in the guest room and slip out early next morning.
    Roopa, who usually slept through it all, stirred beside me and whispered, “Is Dadda beating Ma?” She clutched my hand under the sheets and I was glad to have her sticky fingers against mine.
    “Dadda doesn’t beat people,” I hissed indignantly. How could she imagine such a thing about him?
    “Then why does she cry? She cries every day when he is at home.”
    “No she does not! She cries when he goes away.”
    “They fight all the time and she cries all the time,” insisted Roopa.
    I couldn’t decide on whose side I wanted to be. I adored my father for his gentleness, for his willingness to listen to me, to tell me those wonderful stories when he was home. And yet I hated him for making Ma so angry all the time. In fact, I was secretly happy when he went away on line, and I tried to hide my feelings with an elaborate show of grief. I opened my mouth and bawled, pumped out hot tears, clutched the stern crease of his trousers and begged him not to go. I could not let him see that I was actually relieved, for when he left, Ma changed. She swept through the house smiling and smiling, not even a shout when I spilt a whole bottle of milk, when Roopa wrote all over the dining-room wall with blue chalk, not a word when the
dhobhi
dropped a cinder from his iron-box on a party frock and burnt a hole. Perhaps she
did
eat some of Linda’s magic powder.
    When Ma was happy, I loved her so much that